With “Coveted Brand,” Dell Will Breach Tablet Market

I’d say [the] rapid rise of the tablet. I didn’t completely see that coming.

— Dell CEO Michael Dell on what has surprised him most about the evolution of the tech industry

2012 isn’t going to be another year of the iPad, if Dell can help it. Though it was forced to beat a humbling retreat from the tablet market after its first effort, the Streak, failed to breach it, the company has high hopes for its next offering. Indeed, Dell Chief Commercial Officer Steve Felice says he believes the tablet market to be wide open to new entrants — despite the catastrophic fates of devices like Hewlett-Packard’s ill-starred TouchPad.

“We don’t think that this market is closed off in any way,” Felice recently told Reuters. How so? Particularly given the iPad’s behemoth market share?

Well, you see, Dell has a unique angle that it’s pursuing here, one that’s certain to give it a leg up over Apple.

“We come at the market in a different way,” Felice said. “We are predominantly a company that has a great eye on the commercial customer who also wants to be a consumer. In the areas where we come at the market, we think we are a coveted brand.”

Really.

First time I’ve seen Dell and “coveted brand” in the same sentence, too.

But tablets certainly don’t succeed on brand alone. And they don’t succeed on hardware or software alone, either — they succeed on the broader ecosystem surrounding them. Given that, what’s Dell’s pitch? Enterprise needs a tablet with dependable information, security and compatibility, and the company is going to deliver exactly that.

Said Felice, “On the commercial side there are a lot of concerns about security, interoperability, systems and device management, and I think Dell is in the best position to meet those.”